Week 4:
September 29, 2016: Another great day! Today is P-Day and we started our day off by going to the temple again! I really love going to the temple here at the MTC and I go as much as possible because I know that I wont be able to go to the temple in the Philippines. In the temple today we did more initiatory's which I love! I did 5 names and I could really feel the spirit while doing them. After we finished the initiatory's we went to the Celestial Room and let me tell you... the Celestial Room is beautiful! It was a very spiritual experience for me and allowed me to pray deeply and ponder a lot of things.We ate breakfast at the temple again after we went to the Celestial Room and the food is really good haha. Throughout the rest of our day we didn't do anything too exciting. We emailed family and friends, ate lunch, and did our laundry. Right before dinner we got dressed up and went to our sacrament meeting room to play piano for a bit. My companion, Elder Warner, is secretly amazing at playing piano! We picked random songs and he did amazing! While he was playing, Elder Leone, Elder Robertson, and I would sing the Hymn...in English haha. But it really brought the spirit to our day! I realized that while we were singing I completely forgot about my hearing problem with my ear! it was amazing. The spirit overwhelmed the room and we all felt amazing! When class started @6:00 I had to leave. I had to leave for the first 2 hours of class because the new missionaries had a Branch Presidency introduction. This is where the new missionaries meet the Branch Presidency. We got to go to it because all of the new missionaries had the chance to stand and share about themselves like their family, where they are from, what mission they are going to in the Philippines, and then they shared their testimony. A lot of their testimonies strengthened me and others. We have 3 Elders from Kiribati...I'm not sure where that is, but when they bore their testimonies they all cried. They cried because they are the first missionaries in their families and are all new converts to the church. You could tell that they are dedicated and love this gospel. Everyone else's testimonies were very inspiring and uplifting. It was great getting to know them more. I can already tell that they are going to be a great 3 districts and will help many lives! Elder Russell (My Co-Zone Leader) and I made some goals and the goals were to be better Zone Leaders than the last, to show love and support for everyone in the Zone as much as we can, and to stop by all the new Elders rooms at night to ask them how they are doing, see if they need anything, and say goodnight. I'm very proud of Elder Russell's example to me and these new missionaries. What a blessing it is to be a part of this Zone.

October 1, 2016: General Conference Day 1!!! The Saturday Morning Session started at 10:00. This first session was amazing! Some of my favorite talk was by Dieter F. Uchtdorfs who spoke about how we truly don't appreciate what we have in the church. It's true... we have so much and should be grateful for it all! We should also be excited for every opportunity we have to live the gospel.  Hollands, and Christofferson's... The Saturday Afternoon Session started at 2:00. A favorite talk from this session was by Kazukiko Yamashita who spoke about Being Ambitious. His talk was great for all of these missionaries and very inspiring. Priesthood Session was very spiritual! I enjoyed Jeffrey R. Hollands talk about Home Teaching. In the Philippines they are not the best at doing home teaching and it is our job to help them with that. If you are a member of the church who can do home teaching then you should do it. You can bless many lives in the process! After Priesthood Session we headed back to our classroom to have a discussion about General Conference. It amazes me the amount of spirit and inspiration everyone has in our discussions. They all had amazing input and strengthened so many testimony with their own testimony. I went to go check on the 3 new districts and they are doing great. Their new District Leaders do a great job of leading. They told me that their discussions were inspiring and helped a lot. I love the amount of effort these new missionaries put in!

October 2, 2016: General Conference Day 2!!! Because today was General Conference, all district's, zone, and sister training leaders didn't have to wake up early for a meeting which was nice! Sunday Morning Session started at 10:00. I loved Eyrings talk, it was about feeling gratitude. Especially on the Sundays. We need to thank God for everything, big or small. I also liked Russell M. Nelson's talk about having joy. Joy is important to have while we live in this tragic world. There are many bad things going on in the world today and having joy in our lives is very important. Sunday Afternoon Session was at 2:00. My favorite talk during this session was by Ronald A. Rasband who spoke about how we must all strengthen ourselves spiritually forst before we help others do the same. Never forget or ignore spiritual experiences! Record these feelings as well. Later that evening we had a special devotional by Vocal Point and man, they were really good! Half way through the devotional Elder Russell and I had to take an Elder to the front desk because he was going home and his parents were coming to pick him up. He was one of the new elders and has severe anxiety. When we got back to the auditorium we got to hear the last 2 songs by Vocal Point. The last song was 'Nearer My God To The' and they did an amazing job at singing it! I'd listen to it all day! It filled the auditorium with the spirit and it was very powerful! After this devotional we had to choose a video/talk to watch. They give you like 6 options. We chose to watch 'Character of Christ' by David A. Bednar. I recommend that you all watch it if you can! It is a beautiful talk.

October 3, 2016: Today was another average day. For exercise time we played knockout. Me and a lot of the new missionaries play when it's cold outside. During class I realized that we are doing a ton better than before. We are improving a ton!I checked up on the new missionaries right before bed and they are doing amazing! Probably better than us! haha. It's unbelievable.

October 4, 2016: Tuesdays are great! We had service early in the morning. For service me and one of the new missionaries refilled the custodian closets and cleaned railings while my companion, Elder Warner, vacuumed floors. For exercise time we played knockout. it's a lot of fun playing with the new Elders. The best part of the day was the devotional! We got to hear from Sister Burton (The Relief Society General President) and her husband Brother Burton. Brother Burton spoke about the missionary mantle. This is like wearing a big coat he said. You have to exercise and grow your faith and belief in the gospel in order to fit into the coat. We are going to fit into the coat right away. It takes time. Sister Burton's talk was very interactive. She asked a bunch of missionaries to stand and talk about what they learned in General Conference. There was an Elder who stood and said that he takes notes by drawing pictures and he drew a picture of us on the earth and the Lords hands reaching down at us and everytime we sin a part of the ground gets dug out and get further from the Lord's hands. Why would we want to be further away from that? I really loved that!

October 5, 2016: Today we hosted new missionaries again! I got to host 4 Elders who were awesome! I don't remember their names... whoops. But it was great getting to know them! I had missionaries going to Ecuador, Argentina, Boise Idaho, and somewhere else but I forgot haha. At night when we were back in our residence the new Elders from Kiribati came to our floor where the vending machines are and since there are no vending machines in their country they freaked out and wondered what it was hahaha! The best part is when the item from the machine drops they all scream and yell haha. They also tried Pop Rocks for the first time and they flipped out when they put them in their mouth. They thought they were going to die haha! They said it was like fireworks in their mouth. These 3 Elders from Kiribati are hilarious!

Well that's it for this week. I hope you all are doing great and loving life! I know I am! Email me! I want to hear from you all! If you want to send letters or packages they need to arrive here by October 19 because I'll be on my way to Manila, Philippines and it costs a fortune to mail to the Philippines and takes a while as well. God loves you and so do I! Talk to you all soon! I know this church is true and everything thatw as said by our dear prophet Thomas S. Monson during general conference is true and everything said in General Conference is true and we should live by it. I testify that if you devote you life to the Lord that he will bless you and make you stronger. That if you read the scriptures and pray daily that you will know the truth of the church more than ever! What the church says is true and will forever be true! I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Thanks, Elder Scott

Week three:

Kumusta, Po Kayo?

    This week has been a good week! Every day gets better. I love being here and being a part of this district!    

    September 21, 2016: In the morning my companion and I spent like and hour working on memorizing 'The First Vision' and we did great! We got it down in English but now quite in Tagalog. Then we prepared a lesson for a new investigator... Josephine. Our lesson is on the love of God for his children and mga pamilya (Families). We chose this lesson because she has been having a hard time with her own life and her family life. When we taught the lesson later that day we learned a few things... 1) Not to leave your companion alone haha. This was because we forgot one of our books for the lesson and halfway through the lesson we noticed and Elder Warner said "May I run to the car to get a book?" (in Tagalog) and he went back to our classroom which is right next door and left me alone with Josephine... which is bad. We didn't realize at first haha. 2) Become better at understanding Tagalog. This is because we know what we are saying for the most part but when an investigator responds we have no clue what is being said. After class we read scriptures together as a district. This is the last thing we do in the day and it really brings us together!

    September 22, 2016: Today is our P-Day. We went to the temple first thing and did initiatory's for a while. It was a great experience and I loved it! After we did the initiatory's we ate breakfast at the temple and it was really good! After spending 3 hours at the temple we went and emailed family and friends for an hour. During exercise time we all went and played a spikeball tournament as a district. When we started class @6:00 our teacher, Sis. Aitken, started a new thing with our district. We now start 5 mins early so that we can recite the missionary purpose and the first vision in Tagalog. Also we read 3 pages of the Missionary Handbook. This helps a lot with memorizing these things. They are key for the mission. After class we read Mosiah 3 together. It is a great chapter. I was pouring rain when we got out of class and everyone was freaking out haha.     

    September 23, 2016: Not a whole lot today. It's pretty similar to the other days. The best part of the day was in class around 6:00, with Sis. Aitken, we did a lot more spiritual learning in Tagalog rather than learning words and phrases. These spiritual learning times help everyone a ton!     September 24, 2016: Nothing too exciting or different happened today either. We played 3vs3 basketball during exercise time which was fun. During our 6:00 class Brother Spencer was supposed to teach but we started class with a few Elders going to teach an investigator. The investigators name is 'Bing' and he is Bro. Spencer haha. He acts completely different as 'Bing'.      September 25, 2016: Today was pretty exciting! It's Sunday which is always amazing! The one bed thing that happened was that I woke up at like 1:00am because I have been getting sick and tonight was terrible. I woke up and I couldn't hear out of my right ear... and I have no clue why!? I tried to go back to sleep but kept waking up every 30-45mins. It was a rough night. Branch presidency was first thing in the morning before sacrament meeting and it went great. I went with the other 2 District Leaders and as a branch we just discussed the branch problems and upsides. As well as did some leadership training. Sacrament meeting we great! This is the exciting part!!! When sacrament started the branch president made some new announcements. Because the older districts are leaving to go to the Philippines this Wednesday, we have to release the zone leaders, district leaders, and sister training leaders. They releases me as a district leader and the other ones as well. BUT... They called 2 new Zone Leaders and I'm one of them!!! I am so excited to be a Zone Leader for the new missionaries coming in. All I want to do is be the best example to them and let them know that I am here for them and that I love them! That's me goal. The rest of sacrament meeting was great and the talks were on repentance. I then went to a short Zone Leader meeting and the old zone leaders were there to inform us about our new callings. They were great to us and I want to do the same for the new districts. So they handed over the binder that has all the new missionaries names and they handed over the phone... yeah, we have a cell phone now haha but we can only dial '2' which is the front desk haha. For the Sunday devotional President Allan or Elder Allan came. He is some leader in the missionary coordinating part of the church. I don't know exactly what his calling is though. His talk was like no other! It was interactive and he focused on how important it is to be a great missionary and follow the rules. He also talked about all the things we are leaving behind and how it's okay for miss those things but what we are doing as missionaries will bless our future. After this some of the district went to watch 17 Miracles and man, that's an amazing movie! Very touching! I recommend watching it:)!    

    September 26, 2016: Today was an average day. I went to the Doctor because they were closed yesterday (Sunday) and the Doctor said he's not sure what happened but it's probably because I was sick and is caused inflammation somehow in my ear or with my ear drum that caused it to stop working. He sent me to the pharmacy and I got some pills to take that are supposed to help my ear get better but it still doesn't work and is kind of annoying but my room mates gave me a blessing and I know that it will get better soon.    

    September 27, 2016: We started off the day with a great game/tournament of spikeball! I've never played spikeball until I got out here and I love it haha! During class we had TRC which is where members of the church come in and we teach them lessons and toda'ys lessons went well! We love teaching the members because they speak more English with us haha. For Tuesday devotional we had the honor to hear from Elder Switzer (I believe that's spelt right) who is of the quorum of the 70. He spoke to us about the commandments and how they are in an order for a reason. They are in the order of relationships. The 1st one is your relationship with God... meaning the first 4 commandments are under that category. The 2nd relationship is the relationship between you and your parents which is the 5th commandment. Finally, the 3rd final relationship it the relationship between you and others (Friends, Strangers, Coworkers, etc...). This one consists of the last 5 commandments. This part of his talk really stuck with me and I loved it! After the devotional we had a district devotional meeting for an hour. Everyone in the district talked about their reactions to the devotional and bore their testimonies and let me tell ya... these Elders are some of the best, and most inspiring people! I love how spiritual they are!        September 28, 2016: What a great day today was!!! For PCL (Personal, Companion, & Language Study) Elder Warner and I started to prepare for our lesson with Josephine on Friday. We had to start early because we decided to volunteer to be hosts for new incoming missionaries! Each Wednesday we get new missionaries! Its super exciting! I got to host 3 Elders. They were all awesome and I'm glad I got to meet them. There was this one elder who had a broken foot... A BROKEN FOOT! He broke it a week before coming while water skiing. This Elder is a great example! That's what I call committed and a great amount of love for the Lord and the Gospel! He is going to be here for 9 weeks because he is going to S. Korea! How exciting. The part of my day that made my day so amazing was meeting the new missionaries who are going to the Philippines. The sister training leaders and the zone leaders get to hold an orientation for them! So we did and I love each of them! We have 7 sisters and 22 elders. They make up 3 new districts. I can already tell that they are going to be amazing missionaries. Us leaders all gave them the rules, insights, and great parts about being a missionary and about the MTC. We shared our testimonies to them as well and gave them a tour! Elder Russel (The other zone leader) and I made a goal to be the best, most trusted, and inspiring zone leaders we can be! We also made a goal to say goodnight to them every night and make sure they are okay. Elder Russel is going to be a great leader for these new missionaries!                      

    That's my week everyone! Email me and tell me about yours! I would  love to hear about it. I hope you all are doing great and being every day missionaries;). You are all loved enourmously by God, family, and me! You are all great! Keep up the good work everyone! Miss you all and love you all!    

Week Two:

Hello Everyone! 

This week has been a lot of fun! Rather than typing out what I did every day, I'll just go over my favorite parts of this week and the best experiences.

On the 14th we prepared to tech Maria for our FINAL lesson!! We taught her about baptisim and the baptismal covenants. At the end of the lesson we asked her to be baptized and she said YES!!! It was amazing! Elder Warner and I were so happy. During  class on this day each of us met with Bro Blackham just to get to know each of us and talk to us about the MTC and the language. When he met with me he halped me a lot. He also gave me a blessing after it. That really helped a ton!! He is the best teacher. 

The next day was P-Day!! Yay! We started our day off by going to the temple right away. We didn't go or do anything inside the temple because we had an Elder who was heading home that morning...So we went to the temple with him to take pictures together before we had to bring him to the travel center to go to his flight. We didn't have enough time to go through the temple but we will this upcomming P-Day! Later we emailed for an hour which was super nice because it has been a week since I had emailed last. I also got my laundy done this day. We ended the day with class and I really liked class this time because we spent 2hrs doing spiritual/scripture study in Tagalog rather than learning new words/phrases in Tagalog. 

On the 16th we started our day off with Spikeball during exercise time. Spikeball is a lot of fun! The first class period was great. We did more scripture study in Tagalog with Bro Spencer. During the 2nd period of class (The night class) we got a new teacher! Our 'investigator' Maria, who we've been teaching for the past week, is now out night time teacher! I didn't know that your 1st investigator becomes your new teacher. She is awesome though! At the beginning of class she told us about herself and asked us to ask her questions about anything, mainly about the philippines. I asked the question "Are there monkeys in Baguio(My Mission Area)? If so, where can I find one?" haha. And Sis Aitken (Our New Teacher) said "There's one right there!" as she pointed to my companion!! The whole class lost it and laughed so hard hahahaha! She is hilarious! She kept roasting (term used to refer to joking about someone) Elder Warner!! Everyone loves her! She's a kindergarden teacher so she handles us pretty well. We have a lot of fun in class. To finish the day I set a District Goal to read the scriptures every night together and they all loved the idea. So that night @10:00 we read and talked about scriptures for 15mins. It is a great way to end the day. 

On Sunday, the 18th, I went to a Branch Meeting @7:00. Like i said in my last email we just talk about our district during the meeting. For sacrament meeting my district had to prepare, pass, and bless the sacrament. This was a great oprotunity for the district. Bro and Sis Kramer (Part of the district presidancy) spoke and their talks were great. They were about the Atonement of Christ. We later went to our classroom to watch 'The spoken word' and then mormon messages for an hour and a half. While they watched these I met with each of them 1 on 1 to see how they are doing and they are doing great for the most part. We later went on a Temple Walk and took more pictures. I love just walking on temple grounds! Sundays are truly the best days here at the MTC! 

The next day we stared off by playing district vs district kickball. The district we played is in out branch but they've been here for 5 weeks. They wrecked us! haha. During language study I memorized the 'First Vision'...in english haha. The tagalog version is much more complicated! I got a package from my Mom today too! She sent me some Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and a box with candy, snacks, and pop. It was awesome because my companion gets a package from his mom everyday and now i have one haha! I'm very greatful for it. 

Tuesday was a great day! We had a service project 1st thing. Elder Warner and I finished washing the windows on the outside of 2 classroom buildings. It's one of the easy jobs because the other Elders have to clean bathrooms...haha. We also helped empty the small trash cans in each of the classrooms. We had to do something called 'missionary portal' which are like small assessments that we take every week. It's just to see how we are doing and progressing. During the first block of class we had 'TRC' which is where volunteers come in, who are members of the church, to be taught by the missionaries in their mission language. For example, My companion and I got this really nice old lady from the Philippines who lives in Utah now. We taught her about recognizing the Lords hand in our lives. To me it's better than teaching fake investigators because these members will help you in your lesson and speak english when you are having a hard time with speaking the language! Fake investigators wont speak any english and act confused when we do speak english. We have another TRC coming up soon. At night we had a devotional by Elder Clayton (He is part of the quorum of the 70...Maybe in the presidency) and his wife Sis Clayton. I loved his talk on how the Book of Mormon is true and how the church is true. He gave a quote by Gordon B. Hinckley stating..."There is no middle ground. Either it is completely true or completely false." and this is refering to the church. He also gave another quote by someone with the last name 'Paskal' or 'Pascal'. I don't remember the exact quote but the meaning of it was that even if a church of faith in a God is false, we still lived great and happy lives because of the belief in thet church. We live a more fulfilled and better life that those who dont believe or have faith in God. I thought this was neat because its so true in these days! His talk was great! I love talks about how the church is true. He also showed a video of the amount of LDS Stakes that there are/were starting in the 1800's. It went on showing all the stakes on in the world (each stake was represented by a little white dot). During the 1980's-2000's the church grew enormously! Especially in the Philippines! The Philippines was covered in white dots! After this devotional we had a district meeting to discus the devotional and everyone bore their testimony and the 30mins of that was truly amazing and very inspiring. 

This was my week! It was a great week and it just keeps getting better.:) The best part is that I am apparently the lame one when it comes to seeing movies haha! they have a paper with a list of movies I need to see that I haven't seen yet and they add new ones every day! So far we are at 39 movies! My district is great and I love everyone in it. We joke and laugh a lot which makes it even better. I'm so thankful for this group of Elders.

Thanks for reading this email! Godspeed!

-Elder Scott

PS-(sorry for all the misspelling... I'm in a rush haha.)

Week One:

Day 1:

On September 7th I started my journey as a full time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I woke up on the 7th at3:00am to get ready for the airport. I was supposed to arrive at 4:40 but we ended up getting there at 5:00. Once there we weighed my checked luggage bags and they are supposed to be 50lbs each but one was 48lbs and the other was 60lbs! I had to rearrange everything and add some stuff to my carry-on bag. When I finished all of that it was already 5:15 and my flight was leaving at 5:40!! so I said goodbye to my dad and then went through security. Security didn't take too long. Once through security I ran to my gate! When I got there the guy at the desk checked my ticket and let me onto the plane. I got to the gate at 2:24. I was the last one onto the plane. After sitting on the plane for 15mins we took off towards Detroit, Michigan. I'm finally headed to my mission! I was excited and nervous.

1 hour and 20 minutes later I arrived in Detroit. My next flight to Salt Lake was set to leave at 8:40. So I had an hour to hang out at the airport. I got onto the plane and we aterted to back out of the gate and some switch broke and the pilot said it had to get fixed. It took and extra 45 mins to fix it... which was tough. Once fixed we were off to Salt Lake.

4 hours later I arrived at the Salt Lake Airport. I got my luggage and headed for the shuttle bus. On the bas was an Elder and Sister who are also headed to the MTC!It was a nice ride. The driver told us a lot of Utah history and facts while we drove for an hour to get to the MTC. It is really nice out here in Utah. The mountains are beautiful and we saw 4 temples on the way to the MTC.

Once at the MTC I got a host who is a missionary that helps you settle in. He grabbed my luggage while i went into the main building to receive my name tag, books, and my package of things ill need to learn Tagalog. There are a lot of things!! After that i went to my room to drop off my luggage and then went to my first class. My language class. The teacher only spoke Tagalog so it all flew right over my head haha. This is where I met me companion. His name is Elder Warner and he's from Salem, Oregon. He's really nice and cool. Later in that day we learned about teaching investigators. That night we took a tour of the MTC. That's about it for that day. I have to make these more breef because i only have so much time to email...

Day 2:

The mornings are always the same throughout the week days. We went to a "people and a purpose part 2"and it was super helpful. After this we had personal, companion, and language study. In these studies we read scriptures, write in journals, prepare to teach investigators, and study the language. That night we met with out branch presidency. They are amazing! They interviewed each of us alone and chose and new district leader for each of the 3 districts. I am now a District Leader of my district. It is going to be a lot more responsibilities but it will be worth every bit of it.

Day 3:

Today was a little different. We had exercise time @7:45! We went to the gym to play 3on3 basketball. We had personal, companion, and language study again and we usually do the same things during these studies every day. The language is getting very difficult but I have faith that i can learn it. We had class for 3 hours starting @1:30 and this part of class we normally review Tagalog or learn new things in Tagalog. We have been preparing to teach an 'investigator' (a fake investigator who is hired to be an investigator). Her name is Maria and we have 5 classes to teach her and ask her to be baptized! The 2nd 3 hours of class later that day we the same as the 1st.

Day 4:

Sunday!!! What a great day! I had to go to a Branch meeting early before sacrament meeting to talk about my district. For the most part they are doing great, but we have this one Elder that is a little bit of trouble. The only thing he did was stay up and out of his room till 1:00amwhen we have to be in our rooms and lights out by 10:30pm. We had some great talks during sacrament meeting about obedience. After that we went back to the classroom for 2 hours to watch mormon messages. This really brought the spirit into my day. While the district watched these videos I got to interview them 1on1 to see how they are doing. It really helps build my relationship with the district as a leader. We later had a devotional and M. Russell Ballard came in! I fell asleep for like 35 mins though so I missed most of it but from what i heard it was great!

Day 5:

Not a whole lot today. Played kickball during exercise time and then had personal, companion, and language study again. We do the same thing most of the time. As a district leader i have to get the mail for everyone in my district and my companion gets letters and packages almost every day!! It is insane! During class we split in half and half the district went to another room with another teacher. The teachers names are Elder Spencer and Elder Blackham. We just go over words, phrases,and numbers. Sometimes we play games. For the other 3 hours of class we taught Maria again. This time we taught her about faith. The thing it... we have to teach in Tagalog which is very hard.

Day 6:

Today was one of the best days yet! We had a service project early in the morning. My companion and I had to clean windows. The best part of the day was when we had a devotional later in the day where Quentin L. Cook came in!! His talk was absolutely amazing. It was on 'Preach My Gospel' and doing missionary work. Right after that we went to the classroom as a district to talk about what we just learned. The spirit was really strong in the room. Everyone bore their testimonies and some cried. It was amazing!!! I loved every bit of it.

Day 7:

We played basketball during exercise time again in the morning which is always fun. We then had personal, companion, and language study. Like i said before... we normally do the same things. In class we split up again and my companion and I we with Brother Blackham this time. We played a game to help us with the language. During the next 3 hours of class we taught Maria for the last time! This time we taught about baptism and we asked her to be baptized!!! She said YES!! I'm so proud of myself and Elder Warner. After this Brother Blackham came in and asked to interview a couple of us. One of them was me... We talked about going on a mission, the language, life, and being a district leader. He really is amazing and inspirational. He gave me a blessing at the end and gave me a hug. He is a great guy and even better teacher.

Well guys, thanks for reading this! Just an FYI its a ton easier to email me if you use the 'DearElder" program. If you email me with it, it will go directly to the MTC and print here and go to my mailbox so I don't have to wait until P-Day. Please do that! I'd love to hear from all of you guys! You can also send packages;). That's my first week and it was packed. haha! I love my mission so far and I love my district. These are the nicest people! Have a great week and I love you all and so doe God and Jesus Christ!